Seeing Love Dogs
Part 4
I woke up to the lack of wind and sunshine. I was lying down dressed once more in my clothes and that long grey robe. Sitting up, I noticed I was in another alleyway, Heero standing at the mouth of it, peering out onto a busy street.
I stood up, giving the rug a friendly pat and blushing slightly at the thought of what I’d done earlier on it.
"Hey Heero, where are we?" I called to him, wandering down the narrow little alley and glancing past him towards the insanely crowded street.
"Athens, near the heart." He turned and smiled at me, brushing my cheek with his hand before walking past me and back to the rug. "We need to find a place to stay." He began rolling the rug up, tucking it under his arm and taking my hand to tug me out of the alley into the fading sunset.
"Hmm, hotel eh? Well, it’s the height of tourist season here right now, so a room might be hard to find." I paused beside him on the sidewalk and took in a glance at our surroundings. The red rays of the dying sun washed over the city, and it was a strange mix of modern day right beside ancient history. I had the stupid urge to say something along the line of ‘nice ruins." But controlled it and tried to spot some hotels instead.
"This is going to be hard you know." I said, idly turning and beginning to walk down the sidewalk. I realized we were both in the robes still. "Can people even see us? It might be dangerous to cross the street if we’re invisible."
"They can see us, they just don’t bother to think about us. It is like, seeing something but not noticing it."
"Ah, and that’s what the rug has on it all the time?" We turned left at a cross section of streets, and walked towards a quieter part of town.
"Yes." He stopped and took my elbow, pointing towards a small hotel. "Let’s try there."
I eyed it; it looked all right, not great though. But it turned out to at least have air conditioning and a nice bathroom, which is all I could ever really hope for in any hotel. And the towels were large, soft, and fluffy, something that to me was like a special added bonus.
I still had the residue of earlier escapades in rug riding, all over me. I discovered as I stripped almost immediately upon entering the room, that I also had some nice large rug burns as well as a few hickeys, bruises, and a really painful sunburn. The shower looked like paradise and then some.
I turned the water on as hot as I could stand it and melted into a happy puddle underneath its pounding heat. Sometime much later I finally regained my senses and stepped out in a cloud of steam, wrapping a few towels around myself and wondering what had happened to my erstwhile Djinni. Turned out he was asleep on the bed, making soft content sounds and with the sweetest of expressions on his face. I smiled despite myself and crawled beside him, falling asleep once more.
***
There is nothing nicer then waking up warm and snuggled inside someone’s arms. Except possibly waking up held in those arms, and then finding out they belong to Heero. Soon enough though, I felt the drastic need to go empty my bladder, and unhooked those arms in order to get up and do a little crabwise sprint for the bathroom. He was still asleep when I came back out, so I stood for a while brushing out my still damp hair and watching that face. It was so strange to see him sleeping, and actually needing it. Always before, he’d simply slept because he’d wanted to.
I finished brushing and quickly braided my hair into a loose rope, looking around for my clothes. Oh right, the magic bag. It looked like Heero was just going to have to wake up.
There are many ways to wake someone up. You can go traditional routes, like yelling or tapping. There are the cruel ways, like a cold cup of water or a clash of cymbals if you own any. Or, there are the friendly ways, the nice ways. I couldn’t help but go a nice route, so I tickled him awake.
Well, it was nice for me at least. I started at his bare feet, running my fingertips along the soles of them until they began to twitch. Grinning slightly, I crawled up beside him and tickled the back of his knees. The muscles in his calves tightened and flexed. I started laughing softly and went for his ribs next. Though, I wasn’t expecting him to jerk awake like that and pin me to the bed. Not that I minded once I was there, instead I tried to tickle him again, finding I enjoyed it too much to stop.
I admit, I started the proceeding tickle war that raged around the small hotel room. We wound up destroying one lamp, the chair, part of the bedspread, a lot of the curtains, and, this made me wince a bit, a pane of window glass. Luckily, I was able to declare a truce and Heero managed to repair the damage before we left to find a late night dinner.
***
Certain parts of Athens are lively at night, there are a few bars and restaurants open until all hours, catering to your tastes as far as food, entertainment, and booze goes. We went for all three and wound up at a rag tag little place facing a pile of ruins that according to Heero had once been a temple or something, though he couldn’t remember to whom or what.
We decided to eat inside so we could hear the live music the place promised, sitting down at a rickety table for however many you could fit and balancing carefully on the chairs. I wound up ordering some Ouzo and a starter of calamari. Heero ordered an eggplant salad and a plate of spinach pie.
We looked at each other over the table for a few minutes, smiling and bumping knees beneath it, until our drinks arrived. I leaned across the small table, drink in hand. "I’ve been meaning to ask you, just how aware of things is the rug? I mean, I’d feel really bad if it knew what we... if it was aware of... " I stammered to a halt, blushing furiously and taking a quick sip of my drink.
"The rug is only aware of itself, it is hard to explain the concept of what a rug feels once it is alive. It feels as it always has, the basic urge to lie on a floor is I imagine excruciating." He smiled at me and stole a few of my calamari, which had arrived before any of his food.
"So then it wasn’t paying attention?"
"Exactly so, why should it have? It does not care about human activities, trust me we will not see the rug trying to have sex with another rug." He said it in perfect seriousness, which made it even funnier, and I started to laugh, choking on my drink and turning red for a moment. Eventually I wiped the tears from my eyes and met his look from across the table.
"I’m sorry Heero, I just had this sudden vision of it going to the nearest rug club, to cut a rug, and hit on other rugs and... " I started laughing again. "I’m just glad to know it doesn’t mind us. Now here’s a serious question," I paused and smacked his hand away from the last bites of Calamari on my plate. "Where’s this live music they promised?"
Just as I said it, I saw a tall slim boy slip out from behind the tiny curtain on the even smaller area set up as a stage. He moved strangely, almost hopping, and I realized as the lights lit him up slightly, that his legs were horribly deformed. He was wearing baggy pants that slid down his hips, and one of his shoes was on backwards, not just the wrong foot, but completely backwards. He had a round fisherman hat pulled down over his eyes, covering most of his features.
He pulled out a set of reed pipes, beautifully made, and darkly polished, and began to play and I forgot all about what he looked like and became transfixed. The music was beautiful, haunting and sweet. It hit something deep inside and called it forth, and I found myself just staring at this strange boy in awe.
After a while, I noticed I wasn’t the only one, the entire place had hushed and was watching him. I let my mind roam, taking in his lanky form, the white undershirt he was wearing showed off surprisingly cut and toned muscles and few unusual tattoos that curved over his shoulders and up behind his neck. His hips moved peculiarly in time to the music, the bizarre deformation of his legs making him sway in almost frightening ways.
My eyes came back into focus as the song ended and I glanced at Heero, whose back had been to the stage the entire time. He too seemed to come out of a daze, and shook himself slightly, before slowly turning around and looking at the stage. I watched as his jaw dropped open slightly. Then he was on his feet and moving towards the boy, and the next thing I knew they were clasping each other in a tight hug, yelling above the returned chatter of the restaurant.
I sat eyeing them for a moment, idly chewing some of the salad that had arrived unnoticed. Then, bucking up my spirits, I got up and made my way over to where they were talking animatedly together near the stage.
As I approached, the boy looked up and met my eyes. I stopped right where I was, frozen by that glowing green gaze. And I knew, he was somehow magical, just like Heero and I were. Because no one’s eyes could have that much depth, color, beauty. My feet moved me closer before I was aware of it and I stood next to them, looking up to try to catch sight of those amazingly vivid emerald eyes again.
His features, now that I could see them, were delicate, almost elfin. A perfect triangle of a nose, a pouty lower lip, high cheekbones, fine, slim eyebrows that curved exquisitely over his eyes. He smiled down at me, taking my hand. "Ahh so you’re the human."
I grimaced and glared at Heero for a moment. His eyes were glued to the boy’s hand on mine. I looked down at the slim hand clasping my own, then up again. "Duo."
"Duo, hmm." He lifted my fingers to his mouth and did the strangest thing, he snuffled at them, then stuck out the tip of his tongue to carefully taste my knuckles as if savoring the flavor of a vintage wine. I shivered and tugged my hand back, sticking it my pocket and feeling my fingers tingle.
"What’s your name?" I asked, feeling peculiarly out of place, as if I were drunk all of a sudden.
He smiled, leaning closer, and I got a whiff of him. A tantalizing smell drifted from his body to wrap around my mind like cotton wool. It was sweet, spicy, but most of all earthy, almost as if he’d bathed in a forest. I smelled trees and cold air, moss, flowers, and an oddly sensual odor, almost like the smell of sex. Without even realizing it, I’d grown hard just from the smell of him. I blinked and leaned back, trying to come to my senses. "Who are you?" I managed to gasp out.
"I can’t really have you using my real name, but if you must call me something, call me Trowa."
Heero snickered, nonchalantly stepping around the tall boy to hover in front of me. "Trowa? Oh come on Pan, that’s bullshit."
I blinked a few times. "Pan?" My mouth fell open a little and I pushed it closed.
"Shut up you Djinni bastard! I’m forbidden to use that name now!" The delicate features were marred by an angry look, and then it was gone just as quickly as it had come.
"Hm, Dionysus still mad at you?" Heero asked curiously, easing his arm around my waist.
"No, Zeus this time. Dio is hanging back at my apartment drunk off his ass. You know how he is." He waved a hand vaguely, and then perked up. "So why are you here?"
"I was looking for you actually, wondered if you knew where... "
Trowa cut in. "Don’t say that name my friend, you know he’ll hear you. And are you really sure you want his attention?"
Heero shut his mouth, frowning. "Guess you’re right. But I do want to speak with him, and soon. As for going back to your apartment." He turned to me, squeezing my side. "Do you want to go? Dio usually has something good to drink on him." A secretive smile crept across his lips.
"Um, all right. Let’s pay for dinner and go. Besides I’ve always wondered what happened to all the Greek gods."
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